The Wazir and the Witch coaaod-7

by Hugh Cook

  ‘You do that well,’ said Master Ek with interest. He was something of a connoisseur of moans, groans and other expressions of anguish; and here, he realized, was a unique talent. ‘Have you ever considered a career as a human sacrifice? If you do, we have an opening available. The Festival of Light is scarcely a month away. Just think! Very shortly you could be kneeling at the feet of Zoz himself. Actually… I have a mind to declare a mass sacrifice. As High Priest upon Untunchilamon I do have that privilege. How many of there are you? Let me see…’

  As Nadalastabstala Banraithanchumun Ek began counting the assembled revenue agents, they said their adieus and fled.

  Their next stop was the pink palace, where they petitioned the Empress Justina for assistance.

  ‘Oh,’ said she, ‘but there’s nothing I can do. It’s not my island any more. It’s the Crab’s. Why don’t you talk it through with Dui Tin Char? Taxes are his job, not mine.’

  ‘We would,’ said one of the agents, ‘but he’s on Jod.’ ‘Well!’ said Justina. ‘Then what’s the problem? You’re a healthy young man. And the day’s not that hot. It’s easy enough to find. Down to the end of Lak Street then turn left. First bridge to the right. Can’t miss it. Off you go! Come along now. I’ve got work to do.’

  ‘What work?’ said one of the agents. ‘We thought you had been replaced by the Crab.’

  ‘Replaced but not unemployed,’ said Justina. ‘I’ve all manner of commissions to do. Why, only today I got a message from Master Ek. He’s got a festival coming up, the Festival of Light, and there’s an unaccountable shortage of sacrifices. He wants me to help him find some. What are you doing next month?’

  The revenue agents did not stay to answer.

  They fled.

  Once safely distant from Justina, they huddled together in their headquarters and conspired and caballed at length. To no effect whatsoever. For, since Justina and Ek both refused them help, there was nobody they could turn to for assistance. Except the Crab.

  And that risk they were most certainly not prepared to run.

  None of those cowardly agents was even prepared to dare the dangers of the harbour bridge and venture to the island of Jod for a consultation with Dui Tin Char.

  Tin Char, head of Injiltaprajura’s Inland Revenue, was labouring on Jod as a slave. He worked in the kitchen under the vigilant eye of Pelagius Zozimus. And, three times a day, he helped take meals to the Crab.

  Chegory Guy and Olivia Qasaba were always in attendance on that dignitary. Indeed, they even shared its meals. They sipped at tiny bowls of centipede soup while the Crab gravely sheared through huge loaves of cassava bread, dipped them in tureens of the same savoury concoction then fed itself with the sodden mass that resulted. They shared the Crab’s grilled flying fish, roast pig and cat-monkey pie.

  And, after meals, Chegory and Olivia worked their way through huge heaps of state papers piled upon desks outside the Crab’s cave. Two lanteen sails had been rigged up as awnings to protect this makeshift office from the whims of the weather.

  To Tin Char, it looked as if the Crab truly was running Injiltaprajura, with the Ebrell Islander and a young Ashdan lass acting as no more than the Crab’s

  secretary-slaves. To reinforce this illusion, Olivia had obtained some white paint, and with it she had written upon the Crab’s carapace (in Janjuladoola): I AM THE LORD EMPEROR OF THE UNIVERSE.

  Olivia had also made the Crab an ‘imperial hat’ of the kind affected by those ancient rulers of whom we read in the pages of the famous Hero Sword Sagas. It was a most magnificent hat of purple paper, with seven yellow streamers descending from its peak; and, glued atop the Crab’s carapace, it looked truly imposing.

  Had Tin Char dared engage the Crab in conversation he would have learnt that the Crab professed a total lack of interest in the rule of Injiltaprajura; but, with the memory of the dislocation of his arms undimmed by time, Tin Char spent no more time in the Presence than was absolutely necessary.

  Then, on the day on which the run on the N’barta began, Chegory Guy casually informed Tin Char that the Crab meant to have the head of the Inland Revenue for dinner the next day.

  ‘I am honoured,’ said Tin Char, doing his best to conceal his apprehension.

  ‘It is a great honour,’ agreed Chegory. ‘So please don’t chew any betel nut between now and the granting of that honour. I don’t think it makes any difference, but the Crab swears it spoils the flavour of the flesh.’

  ‘The flavour?’ said Tin Char, doing his best to delay comprehension.

  ‘The flavour, yes,’ said Chegory. ‘So no betel nut. But coconuts, that’s OK, oh, and even a little alcohol, I know it’s, um, a drug and all that, but one day’s drinking won’t hurt you any, not that it matters in any case when the end’s so close.’

  Tin Char, having by now understood the nature of the Crab’s invitation to dinner, pretended to faint. He was carried to the infirmary attached to the Analytical Institute, and from there he made his escape shortly after midnight.

  Zazazolzodanzarzakazolabrik was Tin Char’s destination. He durst not stay in Injiltaprajura, for the Crab or the Crab’s agents would surely haul him back to Jod to be consumed at banquet by that anthropophagous monster.

  Before Tin Char escaped to the deserts of Zolabrik, he had time sufficient to tell a couple of his most trusted friends of the ordeal he had endured as a slave of the Monster of Jod. And by noon the next day the tale was all over Injiltaprajura, its details confirming to one and all that the Crab truly had made itself wazir.

  ‘What happened to that Tin Char fellow?’ said the Crab on the morrow.

  ‘Oh, him,’ said Chegory. ‘I think he’s gone to stay with his mother-in-law.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said the Crab, digesting this, and simultaneously digesting a very large chunk of moray eel. ‘I wish I had a mother-in-law. Or even a mother, come to that.’

  ‘Never mind,’ said Olivia, saddened by the desolation in the Crab’s voice. ‘You must have had a mother once. That’s something, at any rate.’

  ‘No,’ said the Crab sadly. ‘I never had a mother.’

  ‘But you must have!’ said Olivia. ‘Your own little mother, running around under rocks and things. Then she met a daddy crab and they fell in love. So they got married. There was a feast, of course. They had shrimps, seaweed, sea anemones, all kind of things. Then they set up house together and had little crabs of their own, dozens of them maybe. There must still be lots of them left. Brother crabs, sister crabs, uncle and aunt crabs. Maybe none of them can talk, but they’re out in the harbour somewhere. So don’t feel lonely. You have got a family, really. They look just like these little crab shells I brought for you, and that’s a fact.’

  The Crab sighed.

  Its sigh sounded like a drowning diver bubbling helplessly deep, deep beneath water.

  ‘I wish it was true,’ said the Crab. ‘I wish I really did come fro m the sea. Or from the land, at the very least.’ ‘Well, you must have, ’ said Olivia. ‘I mean, you’re either a land crab or a sea crab. You m ust be one or the other. That’s logical.’

  ‘I’m neither,’ said the Crab. ‘I wasn’t born on the land, and I wasn’t born in the sea either. I was born in the fires of the local sun.’

  ‘No,’ said Olivia, ‘you can’t have been, you silly. The sun’s too hot. Your legs would have been burnt off the moment you were born.’

  ‘I didn’t have legs,’ said the Crab. ‘Or ears. Or eyes. Or a stomach, even.’

  ‘You mean,’ said Chegory, ‘you were a deformed baby?’

  ‘I was no kind of baby at all,’ said the Crab. ‘I was born as a.. a perturbation of chance and change. That’s how my people live. We live by… by changing chance. Modifying local probability. But a star’s the place for that, not a planet. So when I had to flee the sun, I had to find a form for myself as soon as I landed on the planet. Do you understand? Sun? Star? Planets?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Olivia. ‘The sun’s a sea urchin and the plan
ets are the pieces of kumera. That’s how old Pokrov explained it. Then Artemis Ingalawa came along and told him to stop playing with his food.’

  ‘The sun?’ said the Crab. ‘A sea urchin? Child-’

  ‘I’m not a child,’ said Olivia Qasaba impatiently, though it was one of her days for playing the child to the hilt. ‘I’m a mature adult. Of course I know the sun’s not a sea urchin. It’s a sustained thermonuclear reaction converting the light to the heavy. Hydrogen to helium and so forth. You end up with iron. Or the star goes bang, one or the other. Gravity. Energy conversion. Inverse square laws. All that. And the planets, greasy old planets, rocks and stuff, Jof, Nan, Bruk, Hikorla-barus. Then Skrin, which is what we’re standing on. Then Pelothiasis, Mog, Ompara, Belthargez.’

  All this said Olivia, and only good manners prevented her from saying rather more. She resented having her sea urchin whimsy so casually destroyed. And resented, too, being patronized — albeit by a Crab. She had spent much of her life in the study of the higher sciences, including Thalodian Mathematics itself, and therefore took umbrage at being lectured on basics.

  ‘Jof?’ said the Crab. ‘You call a planet thus? Those other names.. what were they? Nan? Hokarbrus?’

  ‘Hikorlabarus,’ said Olivia.

  ‘Those are no planet names,’ said the Crab. ‘You stand in error, for the local astronomers call the planets-’

  ‘We know,’ said Olivia, most definitely in no mood for another lecture.

  ‘Those names Olivia quoted are Shabble’s names,’ explained Chegory.

  ‘Shabble’s names?’ said the Crab.

  ‘Shabble, you know,’ said Chegory. ‘You’ve met Shabble, haven’t you? Shabble’s a priest now. The Cockroach, that’s what it’s all about. But anyway, Shabble talks lots about the sun, the planets, all that stuff. Pokrov only said about it that once, the time with the sea urchin. On Ingalawa’s best tablecloth! But Shabble talks about it often, going to the sun and all that stuff.’

  ‘Shabble went to the sun?’ said the Crab.

  ‘In a ship,’ said Olivia. ‘A special ship. Maybe Shabble knows where you could find a ship like that. You could go back to the sun. Would you like that? If that’s where you came from, maybe you’d be happier there.’

  ‘No,’ said the Crab with infinite sadness. ‘I can never go back. There was a… a religious argument, you see.

  I espoused a heresy. I had to flee for my life. If I go back, they’ll kill me.’

  ‘A heresy?’ said Chegory. ‘What was it?’

  ‘My… my theory of time,’ said the Crab. ‘I held that time must have had a start. For how could infinite time have passed? You know the mathematics of infinity?’

  ‘Intimately,’ said Chegory.

  Unlike Olivia Qasaba, Chegory Guy had been defeated by the intricacies of Thaldonian Mathematics; but he had mastered simplicities such as infinity with ease.

  ‘Well then,’ said the Crab, ‘infinity by definition has no end. But time past has most definitely ended, for here we are in the now. It follows that there cannot be infinite amounts of past time — that is, history. Therefore, there must have been a start. A start implies a cause. Which means we should have shared the sunspin, not dividied it.’

  ‘The sunspin?’ said Chegory. ‘You’ve lost me.’

  The Crab did its best to explain, but, though the intricate ramifications of its heresy may have been obvious to a sun-born creature, they were virtually impossible for a planet-bound creature to understand. The Crab began to get frustrated.

  ‘Never mind,’ said Olivia consolingly. ‘We understand the important things. You were born in the sun and you can’t go back. You came here and became a Crab. That’s all right. There’s lots of good things about being a Crab. I mean, you’ve got the most marvellous appetite. Look at how much you eat! Do you ever get indigestion? Of course not. Better still, you could rule the world if you wanted to.’

  ‘I don’t want to,’ said the Crab.

  ‘Why not?’ said Olivia.

  ‘Because it would mean an enormous amount of work for no reward,’ said the Crab.

  ‘But you could have… well, palaces and things,’ said Olivia.

  ‘I could have a palace now if I wanted one,’ said the Crab. ‘I don’t have to live in a cave, you know. I could move into the Analytical Institute. But there’s no point. Not when you’re a Crab. This body, you see, it’s…’

  The Crab did not elaborate. It had no need. The drawbacks of being a huge Crab was obvious. One was too big to enter most buildings and too heavy for most boats. One could take no pleasure in soft chairs or padded beds. One’s uses for compliant human flesh were strictly constrained by anatomical awkwardness.

  The list of drawbacks could be extended.

  ‘So you want to be human,’ said Chegory.

  ‘That’s all right,’ said Olivia Qasaba. ‘You will be, won’t you? Justina said as much. She promised to find you this organic rectifier. It’s magic, that’s what it is. It’ll make you a body as good as mine.’

  ‘If it exists,’ said the Crab.

  ‘But of course it exists!’ said Olivia. ‘You mustn’t be like that. Look, why don’t you really make yourself wazir? It would be much safer for us. We could… we could look for this rectifier thing ever so much harder.’

  ‘Leave the poor Crab alone,’ said Chegory. ‘It doesn’t want to be troubled about organic rectifiers and things, not today.’

  Olivia had the better brain, but Chegory possessed a greater degree of empathy with the Monster of Jod, and understood more of its bitter, stoical outlook. From past conversations, Chegory knew the Crab had been lied to by many humans in the past. Many promises had been made to it — promises which had subsequently been broken. Wizards and sorcerers alike had promised to turn it into man, child or woman; but all had failed. The Crab had been disappointed so many times it did not feel it could afford to trust any such promises ever again.

  This Chegory knew; and Olivia could have benefited from his knowledge. But, unfortunately, the Ashdan lass took exception to the Ebrell Islander’s tone of voice, and this led to a quarrel. Which left them both upset, and Olivia in tears. Though they soon got over it, and had quite repaired their relations by nightfall.

  That night, Pelagius Zozimus, Ivan Pokrov and Artemis Ingalwa organized a special dinner to celebrate the escape of Dui Tin Char and the rapid spread of authenticating rumours which had followed that escape. Now all Injiltaprajura believed that the Crab ruled as wazir. On Tin Char’s authority, no less.

  The mature adults were immensely relieved, for the last few days had been tense indeed.

  But Chegory Guy and Olivia Qasaba felt no relief because they had felt no worry. While Untunchilamon lurched from one crisis to another, while panicked depositors mobbed the Narapatorpabarta Bank and agents of the Inland Revenue resorted to heavyweight tranquillizers, while spies and thieves fought to the death for possession of scraps of the mysterious Injiltaprajuradariski, while Juliet Idaho and Nadalastabstala Ban-raithanchumun Ek fumed with impatience (Idaho metaphorically and the chain-smoking Ek literally), Chegory and Olivia passed their days in what was almost another world entirely.

  Such are the ways of youth that the crisis in which Chegory and Olivia were so intimately involved was but a remote background to the true drama of their lives.

  For they were in love.

  This may lead some readers to throw up their arms and cry out in despair; but the historian records it with tolerant understanding. For, in a long and often bitter life, the historian has learnt that there are forms of folly which are far, far worse than the systematic delusions which accompany amation.

  One such folly, one of millions, is to But I have come to the end of another sheet of fooskin; therefore I will call a halt to this chapter here, and launch into a disquisition upon certain forms of political folly (notably philosophical objection to the paying of taxes) at the start of the next.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Nadalastabsta
la Banraithanchumun Ek knew full well (as knows your historian) that taxes must be paid. Or else the State will wither away. The withering of the State would give great satisfaction to certain feckless political philosophers; but such a prospect is less than attractive to those who rely for their livelihood upon the roads and irrigation systems organized and protected by the State.

  One of the biggest problems associated with the withering of the State is the rise in thuggery which typically accompanies such withering. Solo muggers become organized bandits, among whom warlords in time come to power, eventually throwing up a master of murder who makes himself emperor and sets in place his own version of the State.

  The bottom line is this: those who wish to sleep safely in their beds had better be prepared to pay their taxes.

  Master Ek knew this full well.

  Nevertheless, while Ek was a financial realist, it would have been hard to gather this from the fiery speeches he made over the next few days. He preached to packed congregations, for a great many people had suddenly discovered a new or renewed faith in Zoz the Ancestral now that such loyalty could win them tax advantages equal to those offered by the Cult of the Holy Cockroach.

  What possessed Master Ek to pursue this folly?

  Was senility at last setting in?

  Justina sent her spies to audit Master Ek’s sermons, and the spies came back with the most alarming news. While Ek’s preaching did not deviate from the orthodox doctrines of his religion, it nevertheless carried the most alarming political overtones, and was being received with adulatory acclamation.

  Not to put too fine a point on it, Master Ek was stirring up a lynch mob.

  The High Priest of Zoz the Ancestral was too afraid of the Crab to oppose it directly. Believing Justina to be under the Crab’s protection, Ek durst not order people to chop off her head. Dui Tin Char’s panic-stricken flight into the deserts of Zolabrik had convinced Ek of the wisdom of his long-pursued policies of caution; and, as many hot heads had been cooled by the Crab’s explicit intervention into the politics of Injiltaprajura, it was unlikely that Ek would have been obeyed had he ordered Justina’s death.